How to get cat pee smell out of car seat easily

Do you own a cat? If you do own a cat, I am willing to bet that you usually take your cat on car rides with your car so that it can see what’s outside and how the outside world operates. Sometimes during those rides, when your cat is inside your car for a long time, it might get stressed out and pee all over your car before you can even do anything about it. This can be a huge mess since a car is a closed space so it won’t take long before it starts to stink up pretty badly.

How can you fix such problems to get rid of the stinking cat pee smell that will definitely obliterate you? Well, looks like you have landed at the right spot, as today we will be talking about how to get the cat pee smell out of your car in no time. Follow me as we start our method brainstorming session.

What Causes Cat Urine Odor in a Car Seat?

Cat urine contains water, urea, ammonia, inorganic salts, toxic gas, and other compounds that can create an unpleasant smell that lingers. So, cat urine has a strong odor that can be difficult to remove once it has soaked into a car seat. So you need proper maintenance of your car seats if your cat urinated in car seats, otherwise, it will spread bacteria all over the car.

How long does cat urine smell last?

As cat urine has a strong substance such as ammonia which helps the urine smell last a long time. I have seen, practically, cat urine smells can last a couple of weeks in car seats. Since cat pee consists of toxic substances, so always try to clean the area as soon as possible.

Can you get sick from smelling cat urine?

Cat urine causes huge health problems such as severe headaches, asthma as well as heart or even lung diseases. People who are suffering from weak immune systems should be more careful about car urine or cat pee. If you are suffering from these types of health problems, you must consult with a doctor and get some instructions if you fall into such a problem, what should be medication for the situation?

Required Materials that you will need:

• Water
• Vinegar
• Soap
• Gloves
• Clothes,sponge, pad or paper towel
• Leather cleaner
• Diffuser
• Tea tree oil

Related Post: Best Leather Car Seats Cleaner and conditioner-Tested Feedback 2023

How to get cat pee smell out of car seat solutions:

Method #1: Find and clean the origin spot

When there’s a crime scene, the police usually look for where the crime took place and mark down that area so that it is easier to solve the case. Similarly to that, you need to, firstly, find out where your cat peed exactly. Was it the seats? Was it the dashboard? Was it the center console? Was it the back seats? Or was it on the ground?

Once you have located where your cat peed, then you need to gather the necessary equipment and clean up the place as soon as possible. The longer you keep the pee unattended, the worse and stronger the smell will get making your car a very hostile environment. You need to make sure that no one goes near or touches the part of the car where the cat has peed. They contain various types of viruses and bacteria, which can cause multiple types of diseases. This is why you need to make sure that no kids or toddlers are present near the cat pee area.

 Apart from the pee, its smell is very dreadful, so it will be hard to clean up your car. Once you have managed to clean up the cat’s pee from your car, you will notice that the smell has slightly decreased, but not gone completely. Cleaning up the cat pee will get rid of around 50-60% of the smell. While it looks like a lot, even a tiny stench of car pee smell can make you vomit, so our work is not done here yet.

Method #2:  Make and apply your own odor eliminator

When it comes to war, sometimes you gotta take over what was once yours. You cannot let your cat’s pee smell take over your car and leave with nothing. You need to fight back and claim it. How do we do that? It’s pretty simple. We make our weapon to counter it. We need to make some sort of cleaning solution that will help us get rid of the cat’s pee smell in no time.

There is a cleaning solution that helped my get rid of his cat’s pee smell from his dad’s car. I had a lovely chat with him and he told me about a cleaning solution that he made by himself using homemade items to mix it. You do not need to gather many items or even think about working too hard on making this solution since it is a pretty simple mixture.

For this solution, you will need apple cider vinegar or white vinegar, depending on which one you have available at home, and clean water. You only need these 2 items and once you have them, take a large bowl, pour equal portions of them both into it like 1:1, and mix them together thoroughly. Once mixed perfectly, pour it into a spray bottle, and you are good to go as now you have your very own odor eliminator. Take the spray bottle and apply it to the spot where your cat peed on and then let the solution rest on that spot for approximately 5 minutes.

Once 5 minutes have passed by, use a wet rag that has been soaked into cold water to clean off the solution from your car. You would not want to leave the solution on for too long as once you are done with the cat’s pee smell, you might need to deal with the vinegar smell then, which can be a pretty strong smell.

You can also apply some Tea Tree Oil for a more fragrant smell, which will help cover up the cat’s pee smell and make the atmosphere a lot more aromatic. 

Method #3: Keep your car’s doors and windows open

Let us now talk about a method that is completely cost free and work free. Well, almost work free as you still need to do something to get rid of the cat’s pee smell. First of all, go to your car, open all the doors, roll down all the windows, and keep it like for a couple of hours. This will allow the cat’s pee smell to slowly leave your car. If you keep all the doors and windows closed, the smell will be trapped in a closed space, which will allow it to build up and become stronger and fouler.

If it is possible, then once you are done opening all the doors and rolling down the windows, you can try to turn on the air conditioner inside the car and set it all the way to maximum airflow. This will speed up the process since the air conditioner will blast out air at a very fast speed, which will make the cat’s pee smell exit the vehicle at an even faster rate.

Secondly, you can wear a N95 mask, as that will make sure you just get to breathe properly and will try to filter out all kinds of other smell and particles in the air. Once you have worn that, get in your car and start it up, but first, make sure to roll down all the windows. Then, just go out and keep driving wherever you want to go. You need to make sure that you are driving down a long and empty road, as you need to go at a very fast speed.

You will need to pick up the pace for this method to work so that the strong winds are able to enter your car and exit quickly and take the cat’s pee smell away with it too through the open windows. The air will keep on coming in and getting out of your car the whole time thus refreshing the atmosphere inside your car every second and slowly taking out the cat’s pee smell.

The faster you drive, the stronger the wind will be which will lead to much quicker changes in the atmosphere inside your car. However, try to maintain the speed limit and the road regulations and not drive recklessly while trying out this method.

Method #4: Use a diffuser

What is a diffuser? Well, a diffuser is a type of device, which helps in making the atmosphere more aromatic and helps in getting rid of all kind of unpleasant smells. All you need for this method is a diffuser which you can find in any electronics store or you can search it up online and get one with a good deal on it and you need a bunch of essential oils or you can just get one bottle of essential oil which you like the most.

I would personally suggest Lavender or Jasmine as their scent is strong and helps in covering up an unpleasant smell. You would need a wireless battery charged diffuser in this case since there won’t be any outlets to put in the plug or you can get a diffuser that comes with a USB port so you can easily connect it to your car and make it work.

Before you put the diffuser inside your car, make sure to read the instructions manual thoroughly and see how many drops of essential oil you need to put. Once you have gathered enough knowledge, you can go ahead and activate the diffuser inside your car to counter the cat’s pee smell. Make sure that your windows are rolled down so that they all aren’t congested inside the car. Rolling down your windows will help in proper ventilation, which will make sure the cat’s pee smell exits your vehicle properly, leaving your car smelling like a flower garden.

Method #5: Take your car to a professional car wash

If you are lazy and don’t want to try out the method discussed up top, then you can just take your car to a professional car wash, where experienced car washers will be able to help you out. The car washer at professional car washers have experience in such matters since they have been doing this work for a really long time, so they will know how serious or light the situation is, what kind of soap to use, how to clean the area and eliminate the cat’s pee smell completely. They wash hundreds of cars every day so at least 10-15 cars come a week with problems such as cat’s pee smell, dog feces smell, cat vomit, and the list goes on.

However, avoid going to any of your local car washes to solve this problem as they won’t know exactly what to do and might end up just spraying water and scrubbing the area, which will make the situation much worse, and the smell with get stronger. Therefore, avoid all kinds of local and new car washes and directly head towards professional car washes.

Conclusion:

In the final analysis, we have managed to discuss several methods on how to get rid of your cat’s pee smell from your car. I can guarantee you that these methods will work like a charm. I suggested some of these methods to my friend when her cat peed in her car, and you can now ride her car, which smells like no cat ever stepped any foot in it or should I say, stepped any paws in it. Cats can be a tricky animals to manage inside a car so when they pee inside one, it turns into a disaster. You can try putting the cat inside its cage and then put it in your car so that if it needs to pee, it can just hop on its kitty litter box and make no mess at all. 

We all face different kinds of problems every day, and we at Hacks for Cars try our best to help everyone with their problems and make sure that they leave our site with a smile on their face. I hope that this piece of the article was able to solve your problem on how to get rid of the cat pee smell in your car. If you have any other questions about other problems, then you can refer to our other articles, which might help you.